The ministry of education penultimate Thursday announced the total removal of the post UME examination for entrants into tertiary institutions in the country. It also pegged the general cut off mark for JAMB at 180. This development it must be emphasized, is coming on the heels of persistent hues and cries for reforms in the educational sector. The standard of education in the country is making us a laughing stock among the comity of nations. So called NIGERIAN graduates struggle to speak simple grammar with the attendant misplacement of English tenses. A rejig of the education sector was therefore expected to be at the top of the government' s priority but alas, we just took one step forward and ten steps backwards.
The hurried and almost knee jerk manner in which the announcement was made shows that it was not a decision that was well thought through. What exactly is the policy intended to achieve ? Is it supposed to ensure that more youths attend tertiary institutions? Is it intended to check the well known admission racketeering in tertiary institutions ? Is it an attempt at making JAMB more relevant? What are the possible implications of this policy? Has the clamor for more education blinded our eyes to the much needed qualitative education for our children? Is the government extending its anti corruption drive to the tertiary institutions in this renewed bid for a more central admission system and at what expense? Should the emphasis really be on the number of graduates as opposed to quality? These posers stare me in the face as I ponder on the long term implications of this policy.
Undoubtedly, this policy would favour the educationally disadvantaged North and would certainly spur the dogged admission seekers in their midst to leverage on this policy to go to school. As I reflect on what used to obtain with JAMB in the 90s and the shoddy mess the body has found itself in recent years, I shudder at the deleterious effects of this policy on our long term educational goals. It might ensure that more and more youths go to school but it would certainly not guarantee the quality of education received .
The red flag for me in all of this was when president BUHARI appointed an unknown name as education minister. Adamu Adamu has no antecedents in educational administration and would with all due respect to him not be particularly savvy with educational policies. The minister of state for education who incidentally is a former Vice chancellor is in a far better position to advice on such policies and would have made a case for the retention of the post UME tests .
A lot of reasons have been adduced for the abolition of the practice one of which is the issue of admission racketeering by tertiary institutions. However, the fact remains that even JAMB is not entirely foolproof and insulated from such practices. Statistics have shown that most students who scored high marks in the UME fluff their grades during the POST UME. Eyebrows have been raised as to the relative ease with which some students pass JAMB only to perform so badly in the POST UME that the education philosophers in the various tertiary institutions had to devise a means of introducing their own checks to ensure that only the very best are admitted . For disciplines like law, medicine, pharmacy and accountancy , a very high standard is expected to ensure that the process is not compromised. Even if the individual faculties and departments eventually fix their own cut off marks above the national cut off as was obtainable before now, there is no way to check the process at the centre to ensure that students with questionable grades do not find their way into the faculties . Unless the grading process at the centre is thoroughly supervised , the nagging feelings of distrust by the individual universities bothered by the falling standard in the sector would persist.
One would have thought that the vocational schools where emphasis is placed on the acquisition of skills would be resurrected to compete with the tertiary institutions and push the less intellectually endowed students into. This way, the misguided quest by all and sundry for tertiary education would be minimized and therefore less emphasis on university education. However, the government has decided in its wisdom to give enhanced opportunities to the teeming youths of our society to acquire tertiary education without a corresponding improvement in standard . There is no better classical demonstration of putting the cart before the horse. Universities intent on retaining their standard would be irked by this move in as much as the proponents of this policy feel that some of the tertiary institutions profit from the abolished policy and truncate the academic dreams of the youth who cannot afford to bear the costs for both the UTME & POST UTME. a more sensible approach would have been to strike a balance between the need for reforms in standard and access to tertiary education. Surely a middle ground would have been more appropriate than an outright abolition of POST UTME.
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